Free Mina Wentworth and the Invisible City by Meljean Brook Page A

wait.
    * * *
    Five minutes later, he was heading north to Whitechapel and the Crèche. Mina’s gram had said that Rockingham would be looking for Anne there, too, but Rhys needed to see for himself. His gaze swept the streets below, searching the upturned face of every dark-haired child he passed.
    With stone walls rising thirty feet high, the Crèche covered an area roughly half the size of Rhys’s estate. From above, gardens made a patchwork of the northwest corner. Well-kept buildings sat in rows, and formed narrow streets within the Crèche. He’d never been inside—this was the children’s sanctuary, with few adults allowed past its gates—but as a boy, he’d been in one much like it during the Horde occupation. They’d fed him, taught him to listen, but not much more than that.
    Now, all the children aged ten years and older worked, but also spent hours in their schools. Every child raised in the Crèche was well fed, well dressed, adept at reading and writing, and knowledgeable in maths.
    Though the man never took credit for it, Rhys knew the Blacksmith had been responsible for the strong direction the Crèche had taken after the revolution, pouring money into it, staying in the background while offering the children advice and support. For as long as Rhys had known him, the Blacksmith had a soft spot for children.
    Rhys hadn’t, not until recently. Before Anne, before the possibility that he might have his own with Mina, he’d never thought of them much. They’d simply been there, boys on his ship who’d needed extra protection while they learned the ropes—and he gave it to them. After settling in London, there’d been the urchins who didn’t live in the Crèche and that needed small jobs to survive, and he gave those to them. To Rhys, the Horde’s crèches had been a place for children to live until they went to work, and he hadn’t known any other way—so when the Horde had fled England, he’d provided work. But he recognized that the Whitechapel crèche was better. For some children, it was better than a life with their parents would have been.
    Until today, he’d believed Anne thought that living at his home was better. Now he wasn’t so certain—and God, that uncertainty tore him apart.
    Though every possessive instinct shouted at him to fly straight into the Crèche and land in the middle of their walled city, to search every inch until he found her, Rhys forced himself to land near the front gates.
    The children might have shot him down, anyway. The rail cannons mounted around the top of the stone walls told him they were capable of it.
    A boy of fourteen or fifteen years of age stood guard at the entrance, a steel pipe hooked to his belt. Judging by the boy’s awestruck expression, the guard recognized him. As in most of England, Rhys was a hero to these children, but he didn’t think that would get him any further than it had at the Blacksmith’s.
    “I’m looking for Anne the Tinker.”
    As if recalling that he had a duty to perform, the boy suddenly straightened, throwing back his shoulders. “We’ve heard.”
    Of course he had. The moment Rhys had left the Blacksmith’s, one of the tinkers had probably sent a gram to the Crèche, warning them. The children’s communication system was faster and more efficient than any other in London.
    “May I see her?”
    “I’ll ask if she wants to come out. Wait here.”
    If he hadn’t been so ready to tear down the walls to look for her, Rhys might have been amused that the boy had told him to wait.
    But it wasn’t long. Only a minute passed before the gate clanked open a few feet, and a slim girl in a blue tunic and trousers slipped through.
    Anne. A yellow bruise marred her cheekbone, and a faint pink line that had once been a cut extended from the corner of her left eye—mostly healed now, but someone had put them there . Sudden rage shook him; helpless pain tore at his chest. Rhys didn’t let her see it. She looked terrified,